Rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum
Rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum serves as the director of the Sigi Ziering Institute, exploring the ethical and religious implications of the Holocaust. He holds a professorship in Jewish Studies at American Jewish University. He was the executive editor of the New Encyclopedia Judaica, a second edition of the monumental 1972 work, which now consists of 22 volumes. For three years, he was president and chief executive officer of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. In addition, he served as the first director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)’s Research Institute and, from 1988 and 1993, held the position of project director, overseeing the USHMM’s creation.
His work in film has won Emmy Awards and Academy Awards. Dr. Berenbaum has authored and edited 20 books, scores of scholarly articles and hundreds of journalistic pieces.
Dr. Zohara Boyd
Biography coming soon.
Rebecca Erbelding
Biography coming soon.
Lee Holder
Lee Holder has been a member of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust since 2003. He presently serves as a regional director on the Council’s Program Planning Committee and the eastern NC coordinator for the Council’s Traveling Exhibits. He is part of the Council’s team writing the new curriculum for North Carolina’s Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act.
Holder taught social studies for 32 years before retiring in 2020. His accomplishments included the creation of a Holocaust and Modern Genocides course, 1995. He was a Teacher in Residence at the Appalachian State University Summer Symposium on the Holocaust from 2008 to 2019. Holder was a 2005/2006 Museum Teacher Fellow with the United States Holocaust Museum (USHMM). In 2010, he was chosen the United States recipient of the Irena Sendler “Repairing the World” Award. He has traveled to Europe with both the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT) and Centropa to further study Holocaust sites and themes.
In 2020, Holder established the Gizella Gross Abramson Resource Center for Holocaust and Civil Rights in Kinston, NC.
Amy Hudnall
Amy Hudnall holds a dual appointments as a senior lecturer in the Department of History and the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies (Global Studies). She is also a Fellow at the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, and a member of the Advisory Board of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies. Hudnall's work focuses on key aspects of genocide, in particular trauma theory, perpetrators and cross-cultural conflict. Hudnall has written numerous articles and book chapters, as well as presented at multiple venues around the world. Hudnall has been affiliated with the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies since its inception 20 years ago.
Kathy Kacer
Kathy Kacer has written more than 30 books focusing on the Second World War and the Holocaust, including The Secret of Gabi’s Dresser, Hiding Edith, To Look a Nazi in the Eye, Shanghai Escape, The Brushmaker's Daughter, Broken Strings, and Under the Iron Bridge. A winner of the Jewish Book Awards (Canada and the U.S.), and the Yad Vashem Award for Children’s Holocaust Literature (Israel), Kathy has written unforgettable stories inspired by real events.
Kathy lives in Toronto and teaches writing at the University of Toronto. She lectures in universities about teaching sensitive material to young people. She speaks to children in schools and libraries about the importance of the Holocaust and keeping its memory alive.
Dr. Rafael Medoff
Biography coming soon.
Victoria Milstein
Originally from New York, Victoria Milstein has lived and traveled around the world and now resides in Greensboro, NC. Victoria studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York City and The Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. Her portraits hang in private and public collections globally. Victoria’s practice includes socially engaged public art and programming along with sculpture and painting. In 2021 she was featured in “Pieces of Now”, the award-winning exhibit at the Greensboro History Museum documenting her community’s response to the social justice protests in 2020.
Her sculpture, “She Wouldn’t Take off Her Boots,” was erected in Greensboro’s LeBauer Park in April of 2023. Victoria is the co- founder of Women of the Shoah, the non-profit associated with the project and will sponsor art and educational programs as part of the North Carolina Holocaust curriculum for public schools. She is the Executive Producer of “She Wouldn’t Take Off Her Boots,” a documentary on the project that will be aired nationally in the fall of 2023.
Victoria currently serves on numerous community boards and organizations, including the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust, the North Carolina Folk Festival, and the Visitors Board of University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She also serves as a Commissioner for the Arts for the City of Greensboro. She is a recipient of the Anne Hummel YWCA Mission Award for her work in establishing Victoria’s House, an art center for children experiencing homelessness.
Victoria was a 2018 TedX Greensboro Speaker and operates VCM Art Studio, a place of mentorsing and fellowship, with model drawings, workshops and community events for all demographics. Visit: TEDXGreensboro
Sheryl Ochayon
Sheryl Ochayon holds a BA in History from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a JD from Harvard Law School. After a long legal career, she began working at Yad Vashem in 2005. Ochayon currently serves as Yad Vashem’s Project Director for the Echoes and Reflections program, a program that combines the resources and expertise of three world leaders in education – the Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation, and Yad Vashem – with the goal of preparing secondary educators to effectively engage students in Holocaust education through a multimedia program that is meaningful, comprehensive, accessible, and integrated. Ochayon has represented Yad Vashem in different contexts both in the US and in Israel, speaking on various topics at seminars and international conferences. She has made Aliyah to Israel from New York in 1995.
Dr. Peter Petschauer
Biography coming soon.
Dr. Leonard Rogoff
Dr. Leonard Rogoff has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina Central University. Former president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, Rogoff currently serves as historian and president of Jewish Heritage North Carolina. He is a frequent lecturer and contributor to journals, anthologies and encyclopedias. Rogoff's books include "Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill," "North Carolina (2000)," "Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina (2010)" and "Gertrude Weil: Jewish Progressive in the New South (2017)."
Dr. Rob Simon
Biography coming soon.
Rabbi Alty Weinreb
Rabbi Alty Weinreb is the rabbi and cantor of the Temple of the High Country, Boone, NC. He draws from Hasidic, Israeli, and world music traditions, as well as from contemporary music. He is a singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist. His love of music fills his spiritual life and constitutes a vital and substantial part of his Shabbat and holiday services. He seamlessly merges modernity with tradition. Rabbi Alty comes from a background of “Black Hat” Yeshivas and Hassidic synagogues. After attending high school at Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn, he spent an additional four years at the St. Louis Rabbinical College where he received a Bachelor of Judaic Studies and Rabbinic Ordination from Dean Rabbi Yitzchak Kleinman. Rabbi Alty attended Yeshiva University’s Belz School of Music, earning a BA in Cantorial Studies. He prepared many Bar and Bat Mitzvah students from day schools, public schools, and Hebrew schools. Prior to joining the Temple of the High Country, Rabbi Alty served as Cantor at the Congregational Shir at Hayam of Swampscott, MA, Temple Hillel in North Woodmere, NY, and Highland Park Temple in Highland Park, NJ.
Dr. Tom White
Biography coming soon.
John Withers
Biography coming soon.